June 28, 2004

Banana Milkshake v0.4

v0.3 would have been "blending on low speed leaves nice tiny chunks of banana, if you like that, and using V8 Splash Tropical adds a nice hint of kiwi and citrus" if I had posted yesterday. 0.3, however, has been superceeded today by 0.4. I'm actually thinking with a few more test runs, this might be a 1.0 release candidate.

Ok, enough software humor. What's 0.4?

1 ripe banana

250ml milk

125ml V8 Splash Tropical flavor

500ml vanilla ice cream

a few chunks of ripe cantelope (maybe 1/2 cup at most)

All portions are very approximate. Just throw it in the blender and blend on low until all the big chunks are gone. I think this might be a winner.

June 24, 2004

For Steve C

June 20, 2004

Coincidence

Yesterday I didn't have to work until around 7, so I slept in, went shopping and got some groceries. I went to the Sobey's on Mumford Road, which is unusual for me, and I had the strangest thing happen to me. I ran into Dr. Moloney, my thesis supervisor. Apparently she is on vacation at the end of a sabbatical, and she is visiting family here in Nova Scotia. Really wierd. Turned out to be a good thing, though, since I had a few questions that she could answer on the spot.

June 18, 2004

Summer is here

Well, not officially for another three days, but I've been busy working long hours and going from one show to the next, so it's summer time for me. I did sound for Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellas on Monday, then two days setting up power and sound systems for the Multicultural Festival. Yesterday I set up a sound system for Foster and Allen at the Casino. Today and tomorrow I'm mixing the Inkspots at the Casino, a doo-wop band that has been around since the forties or fifties.

The weather has been great this week, and one night after I was done setting up at the Multicultural Festival, I took a great picture of downtown Halifax from across the harbor. I've posted it below.

June 05, 2004

Nashville Idol

Small World

A couple of hours ago I was driving through downtown Halifax when I heard somebody yell my name. In a car coming towards me was my cousin Clouston. Apparently, he's stationed in Nova Scotia for the summer with the military, and he's in town with friends for the weekend. We exchanged phone numbers, so hopefully we'll hook up sometime over the summer. Maybe if I have a few days off some week in July I'll drive up to the valley where he's stationed and take a day to go to a beach or go golfing.

Hey Andrew, are you listening? Fly up here sometime and maybe you can convince me to play a round with you...

Ain't the web great?

I've been collecting a small number of Air Miles reward points for a while, with a card for shopping at Sobey's (one of the local grocery chains). Today I decided to see what those point could get me. Of course, I want to know which "reward" is the best value, so I head over to froogle and search for a couple of items on the air miles reward site. With a good idea of what an item costs, it's easy to see that one dollar is worth about 15 to 20 Air Miles (at retail prices). In other words, if a CD player costs $100, and I could get it for 2500 Air Miles, I'm better off buying the CD player with cash, and using the Air Miles for something else.

What's cool was that I could so easily put brand and model numbers into froogle and get realistic prices for the items on the air miles site. Yay for technology.

Finger 11

Last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I did three shows with the Canadian band Finger 11. Nice guys, great crew, good shows. I had a lot of fun, even though on one of the shows I had to take a PM4000 out of a club at 2:30 while the club was still open.

Chris Zakoor, the FOH guy and production manager was real easy to work with, and Scott McLaughlin, the LD, had some really neat looks with the lighting rig. Apparently the band doesn't want to see any movement, even though they use a fair number of moving head light fixtures. That gave Scott a challenge that resulted in some creative lighting ideas. In a way, the show looked old school, with lots of color bumps. Scott made good use of the movers, despite the fact that you never saw them move.